Desson Thomson

Sensual, funny and, in the end, very touching.

It is a well written, nicely acted and smoothly directed battle of the sexes.

What's so powerful about Mandoki's film, which he co-scripted with Torres, is the complex, ever-surprising course that Chava takes toward manhood.

The story moves episodically, almost painstakingly.

It's a pleasant experience. But that's what it is: a sequel that replays every aspect of the original movie.

In this admirably unconventional film, director Paul Schrader is interested in just about everything BUT traditional biopic business.

Crossing should be watched not because it's their finest achievement (that's still to come), but because the brothers are keeping things refreshingly different and building a career, their minds still very much fixed on originality.

Taking a courageous cue from Drugstore Cowboy, in which drugs are actually acknowledged to be enjoyable, Rush intoxicates the head for a while. But it peaks way before the movie's over. You're caught in a slow but steady decline, an unwanted comedown.

Taxes the threshold of acceptable cuteness.

There's little here to offend anyone, and even less here to excite anyone.

Frantic is vintage Polanski, with its relentless paranoia, irony, diffident strangers and nutty cameos. And Polanski forgoes the mood-marshalling Hitchcock cellos for his own brand of good old quiet tension -- here made eerier by Witold Sobocinski's high and low camera angles.

The acting is occasionally creakily theatrical; as is the script. But some important things come through.

In keeping with the Smith rules, the movie is irreverent, self-referential, twisted, cheap and tasteless. And, of course, I mean that as the highest compliment.

The Trigger Effect enjoys bursts of energy as people confront each other in low-budget groups of twos and threes, but it never becomes the subtly powerful experience Koepp was clearly after.

For all the When Irish Eyes Are Smiling's and Love Is a Many Splendored Thing's filling the soundtrack, Voices never engages more than your eyes and ears. It leaves you out in the cold and vaguely wondering, Is the entire British nation depressed?

Made up of tiny, non-nutritious patties, this movie is a buffet of Hollywood nothingness.

It's an exhilarating sparring match between Duvall's workmanlike fine-tuning and Penn's raw energy. [15 Apr 1988]

The Pang brothers bring you into a surrealistically memorable ghost world of the beyond. It's also refreshing to have two forceful young women (Mun and Ling) at the center of the story.

There's a great sense of fun in the cultural collision between Indian and British lifestyles -- often within the same person.

Screenwriter Walters and director Hoffman superbly replay the mood of Tremain's lively, well-written novel.

Parents is an impressive debut, and certainly the most provocative new release around town. You may leave this movie realizing how dark your childhood actually was. You may also leave a vegetarian.

Thanks to strong performances from all, particularly Mount and Nicholson, we're with this story all the way.

Until the movie gets lost in its ultimately convoluted conceit, however, it's a superb modulation of menace, tension, mystery and eroticism.

Short but emotionally effective movie.

But despite the overall thinness, there's a great spirit afoot. It's a TV-cultural guilty pleasure to see this charming, dust-covered series from the 1960s gussied up and ready to go. Which is why it will work better back on your TV screen.

One imagines that Bigelow's story conferences with ex-husband Cameron (maker of "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and "True Lies") and Cocks were free of such apparently anti-entertainment concepts as "character development," "predictability" and "believability." [13 Oct 1995, p.N44]

What makes Nanette Burstein's movie so powerful is its uncanny sense of familiarity.

Below the attention-getting surface, there's no sense of humanity underneath. The day De Palma pulls away the masks from his characters, they'll start to breathe -- and so will his films.

The performers understand the simple integrity of a slapstick gag, and they're prepared to suffer for its entertainment value. This is what the Jackassers do for fun -- and their fans, already well versed in such previous shows as the original MTV series and the 2002 "Jackass: The Movie," understand that perfectly. And is there any significant moral difference between these performers and dedicated ballerinas who damage their feet in the highfalutin interests of art, or Daytona drivers risking their lives on the track?

Talk Radio, despite its collective intensity, is itself just another unenlightening late-night call-in session.

Watching Kidman, Leigh and -- in his nutty, damn-the-torpedoes way -- Black as they torment, confound and torture one another amounts to a vicarious thrill ride in human behavior.

The scenario may be dumb and predictable, with a wimpy ending to boot, but it's also sort of fun.

Despite a dissatisfying conclusion, a sense that things don't completely jell, The Tailor of Panama is lively and provocative.

It's a wonderful postmodern hug of a movie, and never once do you not know you're watching a movie.

Disappointingly facile and unenlightening. Things are only interesting when Spacey is on screen, which makes a video rental worth it -- for that tour-de-force nastiness. [12 May 1995, p.N50]

Mamet doesn't just give us an enthralling heist flick, he makes the language something to savor. You're biting your nails with your ears peeled.

How can you celebrate a movie in which Zellweger doesn't soar but simply avoids disaster?

Ferrell provides just enough humor to get us through the familiar fare and enjoy the ride.

Shelton's movie never quite transcends its cheap, baseball-card poignancy. You never get the feeling these pulp-fiction archetypes -- the young hack-writer and the aging bull -- are real people. [06 Jan 1995, p.N37]

A Mexican movie in which the outcome is never in doubt, the scenes are endless -- sorry, we meant poetic-- and the false beard on the central character's face looks as though it could use a little extra gum.

Girls is certainly fun for a time, and Goldblum, Davis, Wayans and others have their moments. But you may find your stomach rumbling from a certain emptiness under the glibness, and when it's time for that inevitable return to the planet Jhazzalan, you may hear yourself breathing a sigh of relief.

Radcliffe is good at showing vulnerability but without the skills to give it gradation. The magic doesn't work for him this time.

If you're looking for a picturesque romance -- with a little intrigue on the side -- you could do worse than "Sommersby."

As with many of his films, Rudolph creates an oyster of a work. You need to jimmy a little around the edges before its delicate wonder becomes apparent - which it does, beautifully.[23 Dec 1994, p.36]

Instead of maintaining its edgy sense of constant discomfort, the movie is compelled to make Neville as fuzzily adorable and messianic as possible.

But the film, written and directed by fellow artist Julian Schnabel, is so tender in its affections, these omissions and poetic licenses seem like the embellishments of a good friend.

For the most part, it's a provocative one-on-one between racial opposites Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. Their relationship -- or perhaps, their ongoing collision -- is the best part of the movie.

An engaging romance noir, a sort of updated "The Postman Always Rings Twice" that packs its surprises into four characters, none of them predictable.

For interested parties, it's entertaining to hear from, and meet, the people who live and breathe the politics of America.

If the movie is straightforward and predictable in its attitude, it also exudes a sort of documentary lyricism.

Retains (and in many cases, boosts) as much of the spirit [of the book] as you could reasonably expect. And it makes a worthy attempt to duplicate Rowling's engaging sense of humor.

Hoffman blows costar Cruise right off the screen...Instead of playing off or with Hoffman (a greenhorn's smartest strategy), Cruise tends to play at him, flailing and swearing like a spoiled, grounded pilot in "Top Gun II."

Everything is tearful confessions, angry interrogations and breakups. But there's nothing underneath.

A Sidney Lumet movie is loose. It's a big vehicle, loaded with the usual artistic statement. But Running on Empty is coasting downhill fast.

Bening makes the movie into something finer still.

Fails to capture the spiritual hallelujah of the novel.

Ludicrous. Its logic flies out the window like a rocket. It's unbelievable and ridiculous... But fascinating it is.

Sometimes, the sincerest form of tribute is inferiority. Watching the Australian film Jindabyne, one soon embraces the conclusion: Robert Altman did this work better. And with fewer brush strokes.

The movie, when it finally gets going, is funny. At times it's hysterical. The great discovery about Noises Off is how tried and tested Frayn's basic formula is. The physical, verbal and situation comedy is universal, no matter who the performers. What counts in this ensemble production is the collective choreography, the great farce machine. In the movie, everyone, Reeve included, more than plays his part.

If you think of Sneakers as a slick, updated Mission: Impossible, it's a lot of fun. It revels in the excitement of breaking security codes, slipping past guards and getting to the prize.

High on melodrama. But it's emotionally engrossing, too, thanks to strong, credible performances from the whole cast.

Intriguing, inspired, flawed, misbegotten and fascinating -- all of these qualities apply to the movie, at one point or another.

Although the film starts out with well-mounted menace, Arlington Road becomes increasingly overwrought and predictable.

It's a grab bag of small delights -- and that includes a workmanlike performance by Toni Collette -- but it never quite amounts to a full load.

If Amazing Grace serves its most superficial purpose -- to educate the viewer -- it's hardly compelling viewing.

Proceeds with an episodic pace, full of narrative twists and turns that clearly are not pretested by a Hollywood committee. Things feel sort of strange and original all at once.

It's not Fellini, by any means, but it's lively. Never stops moving, even though it crashes into cliches along the way.

Unfortunately, the idea for Dirty Dancing exceeds the execution...and the story resolves itself all too conveniently in that final scene.

Start lining up now, bring a bullwhip -- and maybe some d-Con. Indiana will do the rest.

The movie is wry, touching and fun to sit through, thanks to Rosenberg's amusing script, Ted Demme's vital direction and zesty performances from everyone.

At first blush, there's something vicariously liberating about Brosnan strutting through a lobby dressed only in Speedos and cowboy boots. But it also feels false. The actor seems to be theatrically slumming before his return to suave form.

The movie, which suggests a combination of "Wait Until Dark" and "Rear Window," not only takes your breath away on an aesthetic level, it eloquently evokes the mother's and daughter's vulnerability.

You don't watch Bad News Bears for the action out on the diamond. You hang out with that hangdog coach so you can catch every slurry, sour-mouthed retort coming out of his mouth.

The three main performances are uniformly good. Moore maintains a believable air of normalcy pushed into unusual directions. Headly is marvelously kooky, a victim with sporadic moments of spunk. Willis clearly has a blast playing evil unbound. He's disconcertingly good, a whirl of Method-acting menace and goateed aggression.

Watching Ali, you can be sure of experiencing two opposing things: a sterling performance from Will Smith as Muhammad Ali and a bewilderingly punch-drunk movie from Michael Mann.

Although "Pluto" has a rollicky, endearing air, it's cooler than Jordan's other films.

The 11-year-old Osment evokes the boy's terror and awful predicament so memorably, you'll never forget him.

A gruesome detective-thriller about a serial killer who ices egregious offenders of the seven deadly sins, portends an unpalatable combination of formulaic writing and unmitigated nastiness.

Its long-winded denouement, in which Grazia runs away rather than be sent to an institution, doesn't bring the story full circle. It just extends it.

Its collection of one-liners and amusing situations could put you in a diverting spell. A studio-generated romp about three 17th-century witches who create havoc in present-day Salem, Mass., it's full of big-crowd laughs (thanks mostly to Midler) and suspense.

Gibson may get top billing, but it's Sam Elliott who steals all the scenes. As Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley, a man who fires with his own .45 revolver rather than the standard M-16 rifles, he's full of hilariously colorful comments.

New Bond man Brosnan can't be faulted for much. He's always been generically sexy, a sort of programmed cover boy. In this new venture, he's appropriately handsome, British-accented and suave.

A wonderfully unsentimental parable that backs no horses in the movie's secular/religious dualities.

If you skim along the surface of this movie, you'll have more fun than if you submit the movie to scrutiny.

I laughed. And I laughed primarily over Heder's hilarious performance. You ain't seen nothing till you've seen Napoleon attack that tether ball.

Unfortunately, Buscemi's film conveys the spirit of its source material but doesn't make a satisfying transmogrification out of its homage.

Though the movie, made for $7,000, can claim the romantic mantle of "guerrilla filmmaking," its herky-jerky camcorder style, jump-cut editing and sustained takes soon wear out their welcome. And dramatically, it's not always convincing.

Beam yourselves aboard Sunshine, set 50 years in the future. The voyage works, beautifully.

A bare-bones outline ignores the performances, the stirring music, the close-in camerawork and the direction of Steve Anderson. The emotional punch and atmosphere of the movie soar through any hokiness. Plummer's search for the son he never saw grow up becomes a powerful odyssey.

Feels like a manufactured Asian "Chocolat," which drives the label 'art house movie' even further into mainstream banality.

May leave you more cold and stunned than enlightened.

Leads you through a miserable childhood without sentimentality or relief. The effect is torturous.

The movie, which Carion wrote with Eric Assous, has a calming quality. The story moves slowly but, given the milieu and pace of life, this seems perfectly appropriate.

A great movie, easily the most brilliant of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series. It’s witty, smart, funny, entertaining, and you’ll still like yourself in the morning for watching it.

The actors tend to think that everything they do in pursuit of character is great, wonderful and worthy of being shown. They're rarely accomplished enough to strut their stuff, nor assured enough to know when to hold back.

It's just too lost in its own presumed self-enchantment.

Intense and absorbing experience.

Here was my question for most of this movie: Wha-? I was clueless. Did not understand. Count me among the stupid.

Takes the spirit of their late night TV show and flies with it.

It has its own sunsplashed vitality, thanks to spirited writing by Audrey Wells and winning performances from all three principals.

Think of this movie as a glorified home video rather than a bitingly insightful documentary. But for Garcia and Grisman, this soft-shoe approach couldn't be more appropriate.

I don't pretend to understand a darned thing about Jean-Luc Godard's In Praise of Love...But it's undeniably powerful and, if you're up for the experience, exhilarating.

Avenue Montaigne transforms an overwhelming metropolis into a user-friendly village with quirkily appealing characters.

Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom creates a compelling ride of a movie. Every beat of the film is weighted with significance, and our mounting dread becomes almost intolerable.

Exudes that seriousness about life and openness about style. It's about nothing and yet everything.

To the patient viewer, the rewards are many, especially Bardem's performance.

A peppy, satisfying comedy that could soon become a minor classic

There's nothing beyond the bloodshed and gallows humor, just intellectually secondhand implications about materialism, conformity and misogyny.

It's not art, but it's fun artfully done. And as long as you're paying less than the price of a cheapo motel for the night, it's worth checking into.

So full of pep you can't help surrendering to its creative energy.

Wickedly funny and devilishly subversive. It is satire at its most fearless.

James Woods, a bushy-tailed attorney, goes the distance with the powers that be and makes "True Believer" a legal blast.

Nadja has some delicious qualities. Most delectable of all is Elina Lowensohn as Nadja, the brooding daughter of Count Dracula, an otherworldly being with ebony lipstick, lusciously dark eyebrows, a dark hood and a great accent to match.

The geological equivalent of an albatross around the neck. It's another of those Warner Bros. productions that are heavy on star iconography and production values but AWOL on story.

You don't have any idea what's going to happen next. You're not caught in a movie, so much as a narrative stratagem.

The only reason this dilemma has any import is thanks to Bardem, who almost single-handedly drags the film along.

It's a fascinating story but not so fascinatingly told.

I can only bestow this adaptation of Joanne Harris's bestselling novel with such faint praise as "pleasant" and "mildly disarming."

Filmmaker Gray, only 25 when he made this, expertly delineates the restive characters in this Jewish emigre community, and the existential voids among them all. He's helped by assured, subtle performances all around

As charming as it is instructive.

Vaughn can motormouth like a machine gun, spraying men, women and children with manic, rat-a-tat outbursts of toxic insincerity. It's often dirty, yes. But it's also manic and inspired.

It offers a sort of Chinese food poignancy, the kind that may seem satisfying at the time but ultimately leaves us hungering for more, for something authentic.

Engaging, energetic film.

In the end, Stage Beauty is in over its mediocre head.

Apart from moments of conventional schlock (the ending included), "Serpent" twists with expertly drawn menace. The editing's snappy, the images visceral, and Craven's Haiti is a craze of blood ceremonies and political rioting -- it's set during the fall of "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

Lathan, who was such a live wire as the aspiring basketballer in 2000's "Love & Basketball," gives this movie an alert, glamorous presence.

Given the creative recession in the movies, you could do worse than sit through Patriot Games. If this would-be blockbuster slavishly follows summer movie guidelines, it does so well -- or adequately. Neither poisonous nor great, it never loses sight of its mall-movie mandate, to defend American hearth and home against invincible boy-toy bogymen.

Although the movie is moving and even funny in many places, it's also overextended. And composer John Williams's syrupy score practically oozes from your ears on the drive home.

The Muppet Christmas Carol" isn't terrible, by any means. But it's resoundingly moderate, with merely passable songs by Paul Williams, and only occasional real laughter.

Needs more than happy thoughts to get off the ground.

Although the movie has its moments -- particularly when our hero finds himself surrounded by a gimlet-eyed circle of futuristic detectives -- it's never really successful.

For audiences simply looking for easy entertainment and some neat-looking robots along the way.

Merchant's attention to Trinidadian culture, locales and general atmosphere is inescapably alluring.

Has its funny moments, but all too often it's a corny, lackluster film in which humans pretend (not always convincingly) to interact with cartoons.

An absorbing, intelligent and suspense-filled film... It's streamlined and rich at the same time -- like the best of the James Bond films, but serious.

An uneven collection of bodily function jokes, facial gyrations, sexual jibes and pedestrian slapstick, Dumb and Dumber appears to have been conceived by the leading lugheads themselves.

This muttering boatman seems to have lost his old-time heroism. No longer is Rambo killing for a cause, but for kicks. And his portentous blather, even by Rambo standards, becomes unintentionally hilarious.

Brooks-the-performer embodies the movie's spirit with superb modulation. 

Only one filmmaking team should be allowed to make sequels: The Naked Gun people. In Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult, they reach maximum velocity immediately. Naked 3 sets such a great pace at the beginning, it can't possibly keep up. Inevitably, the movie has its slower sections, coming almost to a halt in a slapstick finale at the Oscars. But wherever you are in the story, there's always something funny coming at you.

You may leave this movie exhilarated by its no-holds-barred boldness or annoyed and bewildered at the unpredictable course it takes.

The haunting beauty of the music, and the people who produce it – that's the chapter and verse of this story.

By Breillat's usually dire standards, this is practically a laff riot, and if you want to see her funniest, most accessible movie, this is the one to watch.

At what point in the movie is it too late to ask for your money back?

Ostensibly about the banality of youthful evil, Kids is simply about its own banality. At best, it's a misplaced aesthetic experiment. At worst, it's glossy exploitation—with enough controversy to launch a thousand trite radio and television talk shows.

When Van Damme isn't duking it out with the English language, scriptwriter Chuck Pfarrer is filling Henriksen's mouth with villainous pseudo-profundities. Even in a second-rate action picture like this, and despite Henriksen's commendable efforts, they're painful to listen to.

The problem with this movie is the problem with most Renny Harlin movies: There's an excessive amount of excess -- a mind-numbing plurality of firearm battles, vehicular explosions and brutally frank sexual talk.

A bleakly comic, palm-sweaty hoot.

In a movie as unrewarding as this, there's really only one burning question: When does the spanking begin?

Mostly, the movie is riveting, well-done fare -- the stuff of Hollywood epic adventure.

The movie, written and directed by Jeremy Leven, may not be one for the ages, but it's a pleasant, involving experience that intermixes fairy-tale romance with modern, deadpan comedy.

To watch this movie is to not only appreciate the majesty of Shakespeare's poetics but to engage in a profound, subtextual dialogue with bigotry.

To introduce an archetype like this to western audiences -- as the world weathers culturally and religiously demonizing times -- may have been worth this whole flawed movie. Too bad the story didn't just start with him.

This is a movie about improbability, randomness and absurdity. It almost goes without saying, you can't get in a panic about having everything.

Although Mistress has the spirited participation of De Niro et al, the in-jokiness seems to wear itself out. The tedious journey the movie has to go through to get made is well-defined. But there's something hackneyed about the thematic plight of artists in this modern, commercial world.

It's formulaic, yet edgy. It's predictable, yet full of surprises. How far you get through this tall tale of a thriller before you give up and howl is a matter of personal taste.

Inspired, sublime fun.

Has a refreshingly original attitude.

Although the movie adheres more closely to history than "Quills," it lacks dramatic punch and depth.

The film degenerates into an overly simplistic satire -- with moon-worshiping, Guatemala-visiting, lesbian aborters on one side, and fetally obsessive, meat-eating, gun-toting Jesus worshipers on the other.

A documentary that uses Pierson's self-congratulatory mission to explore a deeper story about cultural clashes and the complex dynamics of the modern American family.

Wonderfully silly all the time.

The story, which features an apparently lobotomized Guy Pearce as an opportunistic explorer and hunter who learns the errors of his ways, is deeply dull.

Self-respecting humans with strange kicks, such as family values or an aversion to nasty sex and violence, already know not to see this movie, but those with strange axes to grind (like, you hate Richard Gere, for instance), or too much time, or demented senses of humor, and you know who you are, may just have a fun time of this.

It matters because this boxer taps into something deeper in our collective souls than the desire for entertainment. It's the hope that one day we're going to win big, too, after everyone's given up on us. It's as hokey as it's true.

If Honeymoon in Vegas is funny -- and it is -- it doesn't exactly ring with structural perfection. You wouldn't go to see it again. But with wonderfully bizarre Nicolas Cage scrambling and screaming his way through the proceedings, "Honeymoon" never attempts anything greater than goofy.

Only moderately compelling.

There's so little authenticity between them, it destroys the story's most crucial element: the love between father and daughter. And finding the gold becomes our only reason to watch.

Nothing from the book is left to wither away. That should please the vast reading audience that'll watch the movie.

If watched from a mildly amused, forgiving distance, the movie has its enjoyable moments—good and campy.

It's just sort of trying.

Even though Single White Female is more second-rate, knife-stabbing psycho drivel, it's no pain to sit through. It looks great, for one thing. It has two fabulous faces -- Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh. It's also funny, sexy, suspenseful and, yes, utterly stupid.

These dramatic shortfalls make us merely worried that two human beings are in danger, but not two compelling souls. There's your missing ingredient, the human X-factor.

In the end, A Tout de Suite leads to not much more of a point than one woman's loss of innocence.

This French film has a breezy, documentary air that belies the important issues is raises.

Could have been a sensation if a director with a smidgen of moviemaking instinct had taken the helm.

We have been treated to something we normally would never get in a prison comedy like this: a little delicacy with the humor.

What's best about "Upside" is its gonzo-sitcom craziness, a situation that lends itself to enjoyable performances.

It may give many viewers a licentious flutter, but the highbrow ingredient -- although it desperately wants to be there -- is missing.

If you like your movies with smooth skin, this might not be your cup of Neutrogena. But if you appreciate satire that reaches out and squeezes you where it hurts, you're going to enjoy yourself thoroughly.

This mixture of comedy and super-agent spectacle works well at first. But when Schwarzenegger's family and working worlds link up -- an inevitable development -- the plot becomes increasingly ridiculous and overwrought.

Shines the light on a special kind of heroism -- the guts to face up to yourself and make changes. What makes this so emotionally compelling is the way Dave scrambles from this deep vale of cluelessness to something approaching moral maturity.

Zellweger is certainly likable as Beatrix, but as an upper-class English lady of a century ago, she enunciates her words as if sucking a lemon -- you almost start to wonder if you've stumbled into a satire of "Masterpiece Theatre."

Lacks the spirit of the previous two, and makes all those jokes about hos and even more unmentionable subjects seem like mere splashing around in the muck.

As Benny (short for Bernadette), a big-boned, headstrong lass who strains winningly against the restrictions of family, religion and just plain growing up, [Driver's] a comedic breath of fresh air, easily the best thing about the movie.

There's more suspense in On Golden Pond. And when the predictable ending comes, it has none of the titanic man-versus-beast struggle of the original. It all happens so quickly, you wonder if you've missed something. But, no you haven't, because there it is -- the familiar calm sea . . . of credits.

Soderbergh and screenwriter Coleman Hough aren't interested in creating a coy whodunit so much as evoking the deeper, less romantic mysteries of people -- and it's riveting.

May not rock the joint. But then, it isn't trying to.

Recycles the great surprises that made the first movie so powerful. And most significantly, it makes a big hoot of the whole business.

If you're looking for satisfying junk food, Executive Decision is exactly the carryout you've been craving. This hijacking suspense drama steals shamelessly from Tom Clancy's kitchen, but it's tautly scripted, loaded with tension and interspersed with great comic relief.

A snooze, despite all the sex and other gunplay.

Deception is another example of when genre-fication (the forcing of otherwise intriguing stories into the straitjackets of horror, thriller or other genres) reduces our entertainment to head-shaking banality.

Adapted by Craig Lucas from his Broadway play, "Prelude" is worth watching for the human interaction, and for the pleasure of watching a love story with engaging partners.

After a promising beginning and an amusing middle, the movie gets stuck in limbo.

After 36 years of making movies, Polanski may be off his creative rocker, but he's still having fun.

Director Phillip Noyce has made a serious movie that switches to almost popcorn entertainment.

In the end, Made is a movie with better potential than actual results.

If Southpaw leaves you hungry, this much is also true: The "food" was good in the first place.

Ford makes such a dynamic president in Air Force One, you may find yourself favorably weighing his odds in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Maddin keeps what could have been a one-joke theme interesting for an admirably long time. But eventually, it becomes, well, hard to breathe. There's something wonderfully unique about the project but the reasons for doing it remain buried.

Ward has a mischievously good time. He makes this picture better than it deserves to be.

The ultimate verdict on "City Hall" is easy: It's no good. The movie, a corruption-in-the-city saga starring Al Pacino, John Cusack and Bridget Fonda, ends on such a false, unsatisfying note, any faith you had built up in the movie is dashed. But that there's faith to lose in the first place is something of an achievement.

Your children are almost certain to have a great time.

Mike Myers unleashes (or seems to unleash) the entire contents of his comic mind.

An assured directorial debut that goes straight for the tear ducts.

How about a well-sustained argument for saving the planet instead of this round-robin approach? And where are those holdouts of humanity who believe humans shoulder no blame for carbon dioxide buildup? Let's hear from them, too, and draw our own conclusions.

It's just respectable trash, and a dress rehearsal for better things ahead.

The movie is given unusually wide dimension by director Taylor Hackford, who creates a subtly scary drama that emphasizes character over caricature (in most cases) and plausibility over formulaic stupidity (again, in most cases).

Part comedy of manners, and mostly gender warfare, "Something" is designed to get the partisan juices boiling. Screenwriter Callie Khouri, who wrote the marvelous "Thelma & Louise," has a gift for catching the oppression of women in everyday situations and putting a sanguine comic twist on it. But in her zeal to portray a world full of male scum, she creates a morally mismatched, pandering scenario.

A truly awful and extremely loud scareflick.

Writer-director James Ponsoldt's film treats big subjects -- loneliness, coming-of-age and father-son relationships -- with such half-baked conviction, it's a wonder the screen doesn't redden with embarrassment. Which makes it all the more gratifying to watch Nolte pulverize the dramatic banality around him.

Despite amazing access to Seinfeld backstage, we don't get a peek into the real man.

If you appreciate fine animation and edgy material, this blood's for you.

The film feels inauthentic, a cardboard version of other epics that's cast for distribution to various world markets.

Cheerful, energetic and on the money.

Good movie, great fun.

O'Neal's performance, on the other hand, could incite angels to throw tomatoes from heaven. As the meek-and-noble reporter (who never seems to find time to file stories), he seems to be a confused Barry Lyndon, inexplicably whisked into this century and given a Georgetown lease, a ridiculous movie role and a byline. You get the feeling that, like this movie, his news stories need editing.

British director Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, treats the ugliest content imaginable in the most beautiful way possible. Give or take another masterpiece coming down the pike, this intricately assembled, viscerally provocative tract on consumerism gone full and grisly circle, is without a doubt, the most accomplished, astounding film of the year.

The atmospherics are wonderfully dark and film-noirish, if overly violent.

The real star of U-571 is its sheer visceral atmosphere.

Another handsome, dramatically moribund adaptation of a grand old classic.

This is sweet-natured fun for the very young.

The movie, a frenetic, explosive experience full of car crashes and gun battles, is original and exhilarating. But more often, it's so overwhelming, it'll make you want to watch "Die Hard With a Vengeance" for peace and quiet.

Edel, who supposedly fell in love with the novel as a Munich film student in the late '60s, has finally realized his adaptive dream. But for someone so devoted to the book, he (with screenwriter Desmond Nakano) ultimately betrays the novel's unrelenting brutality, its unshakably misanthropic point of view.

We may not get to their innermost feelings, which would have taken this documentary to a deeper, maybe darker level, but the movie's purpose is celebratory. As such, it's a satisfying experience.

The movie's sweeter than funny, but still has a fair share of guffaws.

Storytelling like this weighs heavier than a standard diving suit, and it's really up to you, if you're ready to take the plunge.

The screenplay (which is credited to a small crowd: director Michael Radford, Anna Pavignano, Furio Scarpelli, Giacomo Scarpelli and Troisi) is refreshingly witty and restrained.

Famed script doctor Tom Mankiewicz, in his directorial debut, creates the required breakneck car chases, stunt tumbles, major crowd scenes and SWAT gunfire around Aykroyd and Hanks. We're essentially watching 48 Hours or Beverly Hills Cop, only with different funny people. Plus the script is a gold mine of one-liners penned by Aykroyd, Mankiewicz and ex-Saturday Night Live writer Alan Zweibel.

This is fun and there are few kids who won't have a good time of it. But it's no Honey, I Shrunk . . . The first movie was more interesting and inventive, with the tiny kids facing the jungle terrors of a giant lawn and the aerial attack of a zeppelin-sized bee.

You leave Creatures with the unsettling sensation of being highly tickled yet greatly dissatisfied.

We find ourselves in the fascinating no man's land between horror and comedy -- right where this movie wants us to be.

It's not art, this movie. But it's much more amusing than you'd expect.

A sort of thinking-person's cornball movie.

An entertainment to be seen and appreciated in momentum. As such, it is constantly gripping

Less-than-scintillating spin on "Life Is Beautiful."

I was hooked from beginning to end.

Doesn't connect with its audience in the one place that matters most: the heart.

Hovers frustratingly somewhere between charming and only mildly amusing.

This often macabre comedy allows us to doff such civilized traits as taste and decency. We're free to laugh at anything, and we do. Oh, the shame -- and the good time.

As a straight-ahead thriller, the movie is enjoyable and stirring much of the time.

Unfortunately, the story, adapted by Anne Rice from her best-selling novel, sucks at the neck a little too long. A 23-minute snipping from this 123-minute movie would have done wonders.

Before this voyage plummets into Stevie Spielberg's locker, the human stuff is more than worth the descent.

The best moments occur when -- as in reality -- we're still in the dark. As soon as the movie gets to its version of a punch line, it turns into another Hollywood vehicle spinning aimlessly in space.

Even though it’s mostly pleasant and sometimes funny, Zoolander could use some sort of boost.

Hoffman introduces a memorable sensuality to the movie.

A crashing letdown.

Delivers the entertaining goods without fuss or frills.

In the end, we're treated to an overture of possibilities rather than a satisfying film.

This digitally animated movie, filled with a cast of charming, funny critters from long ago, is family entertainment at its most bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

A truly satisfying holiday picture, the kind everyone can enjoy.

Directed by Irwin Winkler, the movie's constantly full of big, all-engrossing moments. The performances -- minor and major -- are all superb, from Warden's hard-as-nails boxer to Lange's serene Helen. As De Niro's secret and devoted partner, with business-building dreams of her own, she exudes a graceful, happy-hour serenity.

This is a one-riff movie and instant cult classic.

There are some very thought-provoking points, and the movie deserves a balanced listening-to.

It's merely another violent art house picture, slumming modishly in the world of psycho-personalities, and exhibiting only occasional flashes of originality.

Never transports you to another place and time, as it intends to.

The worst mistake is the screenplay, which not only cuts everything into superficial pieces but fails to make authentic moments of anything. In the end, White Oleander isn't an adaptation of a novel. It's a flashy, star-splashed reduction.

It's a fascinating film, but after a while, the digital photography wears out its gritty welcome.

If a hero is one who perseveres and never gives up, this is one Hero that should have quit when it was ahead.

Ultimately, the movie's biggest crime is its inability to convey the delicate, damaged texture of Kahlo's life, but also the triumph of her will over intimidating defeat.

Impressive, big-scale scenes, such as a train derailment from a snow-covered bridge. And the vocal performances of Ryan and Cusack give us a real sense of romance.

There isn't enough magic in the bag this time. Although Parkes and Lasker produce a set of primates guaranteed to charm the upholstery off the theater seats, there is little else.

The movie's nowhere near the inspired funniness of its predecessors. But it often displays the same spirit. It's strung end to end with sight gags. Some fall flat on their faces. But, by sheer weight of numbers, many of them work. It depends on your ability to lower yourself into -- or steer stoically clear of -- the idiocy pit.

As with most sequels, Addams Family Values is a thinner, airier reunion. For those who enjoyed the original The Addams Family, the flavor is still there. But you feel a little undernourished.

Thanks to the performances and the general looseness of the script, the movie is more appealing than it has any business being.

This ensemble comedy has its inventively funny moments. But ultimately, it gets a little too cute for its own good.

Beautifully filmed and very atmospheric in terms of evoking the sights and sounds of modern-day Beijing, this Chinese movie suffers a flat tire about halfway through.

It's not often you find a movie as exciting and awful as Rumble in the Bronx. But the sole aim of this so-bad-it's-funny action picture is to introduce Jackie Chan to American audiences. In that narrow sense, it's completely successful.

If you're in the right frame of mind -- a sort of anything-goes, Elmore Leonard spirit -- this thing's going to be your kind of evening.

Grant's unblinking but sympathetic depiction of this emotionally unhinged world makes the viewer feel like an illicit, enlightened gawker, and it has the enormous fringe benefit of fine performers, including Richardson, who puts endearing vigor into the adulterous Lauren, and Julie Walters, Ralph's aunt, who tells the boy her frequent tipsiness is a recurring case of "sunstroke."

There are more climaxes in here than in a Swedish blue movie. This is not to say you won't be thrilled, charged up and put through the ringer at times, but your intelligence will need to be shoved under your seat like warm, flat soda.

This bizarre little diversion will soon scamper into the wild grass, never to be seen again.

Reilly and Luna make a chemically appealing screen team. Reilly, one of the best working actors in the indie side of things, is wonderfully world-weary, manipulative and roguishly charming.

From its deceptively easygoing beginning to the heart-wrenching finale, The Green Mile keeps you wonderfully high above the cynical ground.

A most excellent sequel, funnier and livelier than the original.

Director Leonard Nimoy does not use his ears for comedy -- nor his eyes, even. His three leads recite their lines as though they wanted to take their jumbo-sized salaries and run -- which, given this movie, maybe isn't such a dumb idea.

I had to beg my 8-year-old to stop laughing.

Although this script starts off with great zest, it's ultimately a disappointment.

Though Lust, Caution resounds with these disconcerting themes, it operates on the same principle that distinguishes all lasting romances, be they "Wuthering Heights," "Casablanca" or "When Harry Met Sally."

It's a wonderfully playful experience.

Faraway...is vaguely deflating, a film that doesn't build to a powerful climax so much as gradually run out of air.

Whatever this movie's about, it's tailor-made for its audience. It's for those who fantasize about steamy afternoons in European hotel rooms. For those who thrive on meaningful (or meaningless) lulls between isolated events. For those who love the weighty (or lightweight) dialogue of screenwriter Harold Pinter.

No matter how you come down on this movie politically, Dogville is a compelling chamber piece with constant cinematic surprises. And you remember that von Trier is, above everything else, a consummate filmmaker.

A wonderfully unhurried and precious yarn.

In this comedy, Cecile misinterprets husband Alain's furtive attempt to have himself medically tested as suspicious extramarital behavior.

Few will accuse Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues of being a masterpiece. But it's still full of the things that make Spike Lee films, well, Spike Lee films. Full of the fun, full of the spirit.

It never attains full dimension. It pursues the De Niro-DiCaprio war so singlemindedly, everything else is left high and dry.

The story, a half-baked one about treachery and greed, meanders to an unsatisfactory ending with a punch line that, well, doesn't punch very hard.

This picture is oddly un-charged, indistinct and even long-winded.

Roos and director Herbert Ross pave the long and grinding road to self-fulfillment with miles and miles of counterfeit poignancy.

The story (adapted from Andrew Neiderman's novel by Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy) is surprisingly well-handled, given its rather crazy premise.

Mainly, Femme Fatale is really about De Palma's three favorite things: women, movies and women. And you can either share his guilty pleasures in all their living, breathing, power-edited, overextended glory, or you can get on with your life.

Tin Cup works for viewers of any handicap.

Them knows something the makers of the "Hostel" and "Saw" movies apparently don't: Subtlety and suggestion are every bit as terrifying as slashing and sawing.

This is a superb theatrical situation, and you have two great performers doing the emoting.

May be morally tangled, pessimistic, lurid and foreboding, but it's also humanistic.